Torn
by oneofsixbillion
Summary: Brooke has to end a secret relationship with Lucas before Peyton finds out. MUCH better summary inside.


**Title:** Torn.

**Rated:  
**

**Characters:** Brooke Davis, Lucas Scott, Peyton Sawyer

**Time Frame:** Senior year of HS (Season 4 material)

**Summary: **With Brooke and Lucas fooling around behind Peyton's back, danger looms in the future, if they plan to continue sneaking around. Is it payback for what Peyton put Brooke through two years ago? No. Brooke and Peyton had burned that bridge already... they where rebuilding their friendship now. Was it love driving Lucas and Brooke? What is to come out of a nasty love triangle? Read and find out.

**Notes: **ONE SHOT. No updates. Sorry. Oh yeah, wrote this when I was REALLY tired. Sorry if it sucks.**  
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She closed her eyes, raising her palms up and pressing them against the covered cavity and rubbing gently. Her head was softly pulsating, but it couldn't have been any more annoying of a sensation. It was a headache in the making, and already had a phantom feeling of what the full-blown-after-studying-harder-than-she-ever-had-before-in-her-life headache would feel like. Phantom Feeling: like when someone loses their leg, but still tries to scratch it. Brooke had experienced some pretty hell-bound headaches in her days, and the feeling of a bad one coming on was taunting her brain. This one, well this one wasn't much different than the rest. It was gonna be a _bitch._

She sighed loudly and reached for her cell phone, flipping open the screen and recovering the time. _Almost done, _she promised herself. And it was enough to get her hand to grip that damn pen for ten more minutes. Then it would be five o'clock and she could get the hell out of the library, go home, take a bath, and fall asleep early.

Twelfth grade Calculus had never seemed harder than in the last few minutes of her studying where her eyes where barely focusing on the numbers, and her mind was other places.

She was keeping her mind off of him. That was the main reason that she was here. Screw math. She didn't know what she was doing anyway. So technically, she was looking at a problem on the worksheet for a few seconds, re-writing it under the original problem, crossing out the small numbers in the problem, writing the numbers of a few of her favorite Raven's basketball players down with some mathematical signs between them, and then taking a completely random guess at the answer. But hey, at least she wasn't thinking about Lucas.

They had to stop fooling around behind Peyton's back. Brooke didn't know how it had started, or why she had been unable to end it for the whole three weeks that they had been meeting up behind the school and Lucas had been pushing a heated Brooke against the solid, brick building and kissing her like they had nothing better to do. But he had something better to do. Peyton.

The first time Brooke had thought that phrase, she couldn't help but smile. But now, as she finished staring at the answer she had written down for last problem on her worksheet, Brooke knew that that phrase was true. Peyton was better than Brooke, in many countless ways. Although she'd rather not go through them again right now. _You're working, not thinking about him, _Brooke straightened up in her chair, still sitting on one of her thighs, and added a decimal point in between the numbers six and two in her answer.

Brooke hadn't exactly came straight up and told Lucas that they had to stop fooling around, and that her conscious was about to beat her up for doing this to her best friend. The best friend in whom she had just began to grow close to once more after a long time of almost no friendship. Brooke was done. She was done asking for her and Peyton's relationship to go down the drain.

Brooke shoved the paper into her Calculus folder, and then shoved that into her messenger-style bag, pulling the whole ordeal onto the library table top so that she cold rifle through the bottom of her bag and try to find her car keys.

**"I never thought I'd live to see the day when I saw Brooke Davis in the library… studying, too, wow."** Lucas' cool voice ripped into her train of thought, and she looked up, feeling her heart sink down a bit. _Hiding hadn't worked too well, huh?_

Lucas was smiling softly, and his words had obviously been sarcastic. He was sitting down at the table now, and Brooke felt his knee touching her own bare thigh, but neither of them moved.

Brooke ignored him, and looked back into her bag, finding her keys and whipping them out by the Dior lantern she had attached a few weeks ago. Lucas frowned at her, confused on her behavior.

**"What's wrong?"** He asked tentatively, watching Brooke toss her pen into her bag and then her cell phone. Lucas picked up her brown-paper-bag-covered Calculus book and handed to over her messenger bag to her.

Brooke took the book from him, **"Luke, you know, I've been thinking about this whole thing…"** She sighed hard, **"you know: us,"** Brooke pulled the flap down and buckled it shut, looking back up at Lucas and continuing on. He didn't seemed fazed.

**"Hmm?"** Lucas indicated that he was listening, his eyes locked into Brooke's. Her speech faltered for a moment, but she soon found it again, nerves built up in her stomach.

**"I mean, I just don't—"** She stopped talking. Lucas had taken her hand into his own, and was playing with her fingers very gently. His eyes where cast down, watching as he worked; rubbing the slightly cold flesh beneath Brooke's knuckles and running his finger tip down to the end of her finger nail. Brooke took a deep breath, recovering from the unexpected move and continuing after a second's pause, **"..know if it's gonna work out."**

**"Why's that?"** He asked in a whisper, matching Brooke's hushed we're-in-a-library voice, without looking up at her, although his voice remaining calm, and continuing to rub Brooke's hand.

**"Because, Luke!"** Brooke's voice was still quiet, but more urgent now. **"Peyton… she loves you Luke."** Her mind was telling her to add in, _'And so do I!'_ but she restrained. **"And you know it would kill her to know we're fooling around."**

Lucas smiled again, just a faint smile that barely caused his face to change emotions. He was so cocky, hell, he was probably the smartest guy Brooke had ever met when it came to knowing what to say. Most of the time that is. **"But I can't let you go, Brooke… you've stolen my heart."**

He had looked up from her hand as he finished off by quoting lyrics from Brooke's favorite Dashboard song. Lucas's hand tightened, squeezing Brooke's gently.

**"Lucas,"** Brooke gasped his name seriously, taking another deep breath, her voice strained a bit. **"I can't do this, I'm sorry."**

**"Brooke,"** Lucas was serious now, not wanting to lose her, **"I love you."**

**"I-I know that Lucas,"** Brooke replied softly, looking away from his gorgeous blue eyes as she found the courage to say what she knew she had to, "**But, I-I'm trying to stop loving you,"** Brooke felt like she was going to cry, but was doing her best to keep her brimming eyes from exploding into an embarrassing and messy act of water works. **"And, I need you to let me try to do that, okay?"**

Too bad operation Hold Back The Tears was failing, because Brooke was getting more and more emotional. And at the same time, she was feeling the same hurt that Lucas was. She could tell she had just hurt him. His eyes lost that small sparkle, and his smile turned into a blank expression.

**"Okay."** Lucas said with a sigh, pulling his hand away from Brooke's slowly. **"I can respect that."**

Brooke sniffled, wiping her eyes with her fingers quickly. Her cheeks where hot, and she probably looked like a complete mess.

Brooke made to stand up, and Lucas leaned back against the rigid wooden chair he was sitting in, watching her go.

Brooke made it to the exit, having controlled her tears. But as she walked through the parking lot and towards her BMW, she couldn't hold it in anymore. And it didn't help that her automatic door-unlocking button on her keys wasn't working, and through the blurry haze of her tears, Brooke couldn't get the key into the slot.

**"Damnit!"** She exclaimed to anyone around her, which was no one, **"God _fucking _damnit!"** Brooke kicked the side of her BMW with more force than intended, slamming her fists against the glass window pane and shaking as she cried for a few more moments, silently shaking with the anguish of finally ending what she had with Lucas Scott: the first boy that she had ever given a rat's ass about.

For a moment she thought about turning around and going after what she had just thrown away. But then she saw something that she hadn't expected to see. Peyton: Her best friend, jogging towards where Brooke was standing with a concerned look on her face. She hitched the strap of her own messenger bag on her shoulder a few steps before she reached her crying best friend, Brooke Davis.

Brooke and Peyton had been friends ever since they where kids. Brooke had been there for Peyton, even though they where young, when Peyton's mom died in a car accident. And ever since then, they had never really stopped being friends. Peyton thought that girls didn't ever truly stop being friends, they just bitched and bickered until everything worked out right. And that is what had happened for a huge chunk of their senior year in high school. Over Peyton's current boyfriend, Lucas Scott. But she and Brooke where stable again. And damn did it feel good to have her best friend again.

**"B.,"** Peyton reached out and took Brooke's hand into her own, **"What's wrong, what happened?"**

Brooke faltered for a moment, having successfully stopped her tears. Brooke sniffed once more as another second passed. **"I— no, nothing… it's so stupid. My car won't open, and my head hurts, and I just… I'm having a bad day."** Brooke whined pathetically, edited some of the truth out, but Peyton didn't seem to have noticed.

Peyton raised her eyebrows and then grinned. **"Give me the keys,"** She said with a small laugh, snatching Brooke's keys out of her hand and unlocking the BMW's door. She didn't put a minor panic attack past Brooke on a bad day. Even if it was over something as stupid as her car not opening.

Brooke laughed, sniffling again and wiping her damp cheeks. Peyton turned around and grabbed Brooke's bag, tossing it into the backseat of the small car along with her own. **"I'll drive you're sorry ass home, get in."**

Brooke smiled and made her way around the front of the car to the passenger door, pulling it open roughly and leaping into the seat. Glancing over at Peyton as she started the car, Brooke felt bad for reconsidering her decision on Lucas. It had been the right thing to do. And sometimes, if you love someone enough, you have to make sacrificed.

In Brooke's instance: she had made sacrifices for two different people that she loved.

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Please leave me comments. I appreciate all feedback. Thanks!! _- oneofsixbillion © 2007_


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